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Student accommodation plan shows declining enrollment, rising charter and homeschool participation
Summary
Staff presented the annual Student Accommodation Plan, showing district enrollment at its lowest since 2002 while county population has grown; charter share and homeschool/scholarship participation have risen, and the plan includes short-term capacity projects and five-year enrollment projections.
Anna Black presented the Student Accommodation Plan and said it is the district’s annual document used to guide facility planning and capacity decisions. "The student accommodation plan is an annual report, approved by the school board each year that is used as a guide in making planning decisions for the following school year," she said.
The plan documents current enrollment, permanent and total capacity, and a from-to (FUM II) analysis that shows where students live and where they attend. Black told the board that Brevard County’s population is roughly 660,000 and the district serves about 72,000 students in 101 facilities. Key takeaways: district enrollment is the lowest since first surpassing 72,000 in 2002 despite population growth; the share of students attending charter schools is rising (reported in the presentation at about 13.74%); kindergarten cohort size is lower than birth counts five years earlier, and the district is seeing significant growth in home education and scholarship-program participation.
Black pointed to specific capacity actions in the plan, including classroom additions at Bayside and Westside Elementary Schools, a new separate day school, recent attendance-boundary changes approved in January, and state appropriations for CTE and adult education programs. She also noted the annual projections and mapping work that show areas of overcapacity and undercapacity and said the district uses a demographic model informed by birth rates, mobility, scholarship participation and residential development to produce five-year projections.
Board members thanked staff for the clear presentation and discussed the middle-school trend where students leave traditional middle schools for charter options between grades 5–6 and 6–7, a pattern some members called "poaching"; Black supplied detailed from-to numbers by feeder and recommended continued monitoring. She said the plan will be on the board agenda for March 31 and that staff will return with any necessary implementation steps for the projects listed.
The presentation did not include board action votes; staff said the plan documents planned projects, data and a process that will inform future board decisions about capacity and boundaries.
